One of our newest clients recently asked, “What have you seen that has not worked for other brands you’ve developed original product for?”.
There are so many factors that go into creating a successful apparel or accessory brand. The first thing that comes to mind is the fine balance of great quality product and great quality marketing. Both are necessary to get and maintain sales. We can help you create and produce your vision. If you hire us, your product will come out looking good because that’s what we do. That is one half of the equation. The other half is that you need a great name with solid branding (logo/color scheme/story/website/etc), and then you need to market and sell constantly. It’s full time job. If you’re going to invest in getting the product made right, please invest in good marketing support as well. Then you can really start to learn about your customer base and get an initial read on your business as you start to make sales.
For example, take a well-made, well-designed legging that looks fantastic in real life. If you take photos of it on a hanger, with your old iPhone 6, and load those photos up on a template website, the product probably won’t look as nice as it needs to online for high sales volume. This approach might not work. You want the product photographed on the right ‘customer’ to sell the product. The photos should ultimately look professional and so should the website, however you get there.
Once the product, photos, and site are ready, marketing to push for sales is the next step. You need to know the specific customer demographic that you’re selling to. Once you have a customer profile, Facebook and Instagram ads are an easy place to start. You can make your Instagram account shoppable as well now for another sales channel. Gathering email addresses on your site and starting an email newsletter is still an important and useful tool too. We recommend Mailchimp for that. Then there’s content marketing, like guest blogging on a site your customers visit often, targeted outreach, strategic networking, working with influencers, etc.
Ready to start developing your original product idea? Reach out on our contact form here – www.developapparel.com/contact . Please note we are booked for March and may have new client openings starting in April and May.
Thanks for reading,
Jessica
(We are not affiliated with iPhone, Facebook, Instagram, or Mailchimp.)